If the AFL can accept in-season “poaching”, why can’t it deal with in-season announcements from players changing clubs

JUST six years ago Port Adelaide and the Crows took issue with AFL rivals meeting their players in season to lure them to new clubs. Now everyone is doing it

WHAT is the most redundant - most ignored - rule in the AFL today?

Rule 4.7. The anti-poaching rule that threatens to hit AFL clubs with fines of up to $50,000 for making an in-season approach to a player to change clubs.

Six years - and one week - have passed since Geelong coach Chris Scott, captain Joel Selwood, James Bartel and Cats recruiting manager Stephen Wells boldly arrived in Adelaide to talk to Port Adelaide midfielder Travis Boak.

The Power, in particular chief executive Keith Thomas, showed more anger than it could muster on the field where it won only five games. Across the boulevard, the Crows warned Brisbane to not even contemplate trying the same move with out-of-contract forward Kurt Tippett.

And what did the AFL do? It turned a blind eye - and emphasised rule 4.7 did not prevent clubs wining and dining opposition players ... as long as there was no talk about money. Who would spoil a nice lunch at Magill Estate or a Penfold’s Shiraz with haggling about salaries?

No surprise then that the in-season attempts to recruit AFL players - once known as poaching - has increased (and significantly). It is far more subtle, unlike - as Thomas said of the Geelong delegation in 2012 - clubs marching into towns with brass bands and their suit buttons all polished.

But the sales pitches - and club tours, as noted with Western Bulldogs midfielder Lin Jong at Collingwood in 2016 - are happening more than ever in a total snub of AFL rule 4.7.

Magpies coach Nathan Buckley’s revelation that he and others at Collingwood have made an in-season sales pitch to Gold Coast free agent Tom Lynch passes without the same outrage that followed Geelong’s move on Boak in 2012.

No-one is upset about a big Victorian club driving another nail against a struggling Queensland unit.

And Collingwood would not be alone in having met Lynch this year to put forward a case for changing clubs. Of course, no-one would have directly spoken to Lynch about money to contravene rule 4.7. The messy details can be left with Lynch’s manager (along with his four per cent cut).

In six years the game has matured to understand - as with others professional football codes such as rugby league and soccer - that players are poached in-season.

So when does it mature to accept players declaring their intentions rather than keeping their dirty little secrets?

AFL Players’ Association chief Paul Marsh has made it across the bridge. He says: “I would love for us to get to the point where we are mature enough to accept that a player will make that decision and get on with it.

“The thing I can say with 100 per cent confidence is that any player who made that decision and then announced it, would not try any less hard for the team that he is currently with. They are professionals and there is no evidence of anyone trying any less hard.”

There is now much evidence of AFL clubs accepting players are so professional they are deciding where they want to play before their current contracts expire. So rule 4.7 is redundant ... more so when the AFL has even forgotten it exists.

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